Republican lawmakers are officially jumping into the legal fight over President Barack Obama’s recess appointments to the National Labor Relations Board and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. And leading the GOP senators’ fight is a man who was blocked from a judicial appointment by Senate Democrats years ago.

Senate Republicans said yesterday they plan to file an amicus brief in the case challenging Obama’s authority to make the controversial appointments, according to the Washington Post. The White House has defended the validity of the recess appointments, and said they were necessary to keep the agencies operating as GOP lawmakers stalled nominees’ confirmation votes.

The Republican lawmakers brief will be authored by Miguel Estrada, a partner in the Washington office of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher whose own judicial nomination to the D.C. Circuit was filibustered by Senate Democrats in 2001. (The news came, interestingly enough, the same day Estrada argued a case before the U.S. Supreme Court.)

“We think it’s the appropriate case,” said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., according to the Post. “And I thought that Miguel’s own experience with the confirmation process, that it might make particularly good sense for him to represent us in this particular undertaking.”

When the 5th Circuit speaks, the Justice Department listens – and responds.

In a memorandum to a panel of federal judges hearing a challenge to the federal health care law, Attorney General Eric Holder backed comments made earlier in the week by President Barack Obama that courts ought to tread lightly when considering challenges to laws passed by Congress.

But Holder said the president’s comments in no way reflected a change in the Justice Department’s views on judicial authority, nor did they imply that courts do not have authority to consider constitutional challenges to federal laws.

Earlier this week, Obama suggested at a news conference that overturning the health care law would amount to “judicial activism.”

For more on Holder’s memo, see the full story on Lawyers USA online.

Meanwhile, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has chimed in on the matter.

“The president crossed a dangerous line this week. And anyone who cares about liberty needs to call him out on it,” McConnell said during a speech on Thursday, according to CNN. “Respectfully, I would suggest the president back off.”

As lawmakers prepare to take up the controversial tort reform legislation later this week, the measure is creating a strange coalition of opponents seeking to stop the bill in its tracks.

As we’ve reported in Lawyers USA, the trial lawyers’ group the American Association for Justice has actively opposed H.R. 5, the Help Efficient, Accessible, Low Cost, Timely Health Care (HEALTH) Act. The bill, which would cap non-economic damages in medical negligence cases at $250,000 and repeal part of the federal health care law aimed at cutting Medicare costs, is set for a House vote later this week.

But AAJ officials say the bill affects far more than medical malpractice cases. It is a “far-­reaching bill that would affect caps on damages,  limits on attorneys’ fees, medical negligence law, nursing home cases, medical device and pharmaceutical cases, and bad faith cases against health insurers,” according to a message to AAJ’s membership.

AAJ officials tell me that the bill would also thwart suits against doctors who commit intentional torts, such as sexual abuse.

Meanwhile, conservative groups such as the Heritage Foundation and the Tea Party movement have also attacked the measure, saying it infringes upon states’ rights and violates the Commerce Clause, according to the InjuryBoard’s Andrew Cochran.

Cochran quotes the Heritage Foundation’s Hans von Spakovsky’s statement on the group’s blog The Foundry:

“The problem with most of the proposed reforms in H.R. 5 is that the law governing medical malpractice claims is a state issue, not a federal issue. Despite H.R. 5′s reliance on the Commerce Clause, Congress has no business (and no authority under the Constitution) telling states what the rules should be governing medical malpractice claims,” Spakovsky writes.

After a week of bickering and maneuvering, members of the Senate have agreed on a plan that will speed up the confirmation process of 14 out of 17 judicial nominees whose bids have been stalled.

After a standoff which had GOP Senate members blocking the judicial nominees in protest of recent recess appointments by President Barack Obama, and Democrats responding by holding up the Republican-backed JOBS bill,  yesterday both parties announced an agreement to vote on 14 judicial nominations between now and May 7, Roll Call reports.

The move will allow lawmakers from considering the nominations of all 17 candidates back to back, which would have been required after Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid called a cloture vote on all 17 nominees last week.

Yesterday, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid had an offer he hoped Senate Republicans would not refuse: a quick vote on the GOP-backed Jobs Act in exchange for bringing 17 judicial nominations to a vote.

But according to NBC’s Libby Leist (via The Wall Street Journal’s Law Blog) Republicans rebuffed the move, accusing Reid of holding up the jobs bill to force a vote in nominated federal judges. Republicans have been blocking judicial nominees in protest of President Barack Obama’s recent recess appointments to the National Labor Relations Board and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

In making the offer for a swift vote on the JOBS bill, Reid said on the floor: “The only thing preventing the Senate from moving quickly to tackle [the JOBS Act] is what we’ve had this whole Congress: obstructionism by my friends, the Republicans.”

But Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell fired back. “I think most Senators would rather be working on things that the American people believe would actually help create jobs than to see the Senate embroiled in another controversy which I fear my good friend, the majority leader, is seeking to precipitate,” McConnell said.

Sen. Chuck Grassley, angered by an opinion issued by the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel finding President Barack Obama’s recent recess appointments legal, took aim at the opinion’s author, suggesting that she won’t be confirmed by the Senate again.

The opinion, authored by Assistant Attorney General Virginia A. Seitz earlier this month, found that Congress was in recess when Obama made four recess appointments despite Congressional Republicans’ efforts to gavel in pro forma sessions over the holiday break to prevent such appointments.

“I gave the President and Ms. Seitz the benefit of the doubt in voting to confirm her nomination,” Grassley said in a Senate floor speech Monday, according to Politico. “However, after reading this misguided and dangerous legal opinion, I’m sorry the Senate confirmed her. It’s likely to be the last confirmation she ever experiences.”

Those comments rankled some OLC attorneys from previous administrations, who said such blackball threats are dangerous.

“OLC lawyers should be free to render their honest opinion and not be threatened with adverse career consequences by either the White House or Congress,” Richard Painter, a White House ethics lawyer during the Bush administration, told Politico.

“The Senator’s name-calling is misplaced,” said Jack Goldsmith, who helmed the OLC during President George W. Bush’s administration.

President Bill Clinton’s chief OLC attorney Walter Dellinger said he was astonished by Grassley’s comments. “I can’t believe that Senator Grassley has actually read Seitz’s thoughtful and carefully reasoned opinion.  And he may not be aware that attorney’s in the administration of President George W. Bush reached the same conclusion that she reached,” Dellinger told Politico.

It did not take long for Congressional Republicans to seize on the controversial recess appointments President Barack Obama made last week.

On Friday GOP members of the Senate judiciary Committee, led by Sen. Chuck Grassley, sent a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder pressing him to disclose just what role the Department of Justice played in advising the president on the recess appointments.

As has been well reported, Obama appointed Richard Cordray as director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and three members – Sharon Block, Richard Griffin and Terence F. Flynn – to the NLRB. The Senate had previously filibustered Cordray’s nomination and stalled the NLRB nominees, allowing the Board to fall below its statutory quorum the day before Obama made the recess appointments.

Obama made the move despite efforts by lawmakers to prevent Congress from recessing by repeatedly gaveling in pro forma sessions over the holiday break.

The lawmakers’ letter stated that the appointments went against opinions issued by past attorneys general, the U.S. Supreme Court and other authorities that “clearly indicate the view that a congressional recess must be longer than three days – and perhaps at least as long as ten — in order for a recess appointment to be constitutional.  These various authorities have reached this conclusion for over 90 years and have become the stated position of the Executive Branch, including multiple representations before the Supreme Court, regarding the required length of time for a recess in order for the President to make a recess appointment.”

Meanwhile, last week Rep. Bill Johnson threatened a lawsuit over the matter.

“Dodd-Frank made it very clear that to set it up it must have Senate approval,” Johnson told Fox Business’ Neil Cavuto (see it here via The Hill). “And the president cannot just arbitrarily change the rules or decide on his own the Senate’s definition of when it’s in session and when it’s not in session.”

If the goal of presidential candidate and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich was to get people talking about ideas on the federal judiciary, he succeeded! Gingrich’s plan, which would include ignoring the Supreme Court and having judges subpoenaed, arrested and hauled before Congress, has drawn much ire. Gingrich’s latest critic – fellow Republican Sen. Scott Brown, who called Gingrich’s comments “disturbing.”

“If a president and majorities in Congress could simply overturn the constitutional interpretations of the Court, and if judges could be arrested for displeasing politicians in the other two branches, we would be placing our basic rights in jeopardy,” Brown wrote in a recent Boston Globe op-ed. The rule of law would be destroyed.

Brown warned that voters may not be soon keen on Gingrich’s ideas either.

“An independent judiciary is a cornerstone of our democracy,” Brown wrote. “That Gingrich would make the courts tremble at the thought of retaliation from the president or whatever political party has the majority at the time is a very dangerous notion that threatens the founding principles of our government. If the former speaker doesn’t publicly disavow these views, the voters in New Hampshire and elsewhere will disavow his views on this issue.”

Washington is looking a bit like a schoolyard, because there is about to be a big fight over recess.

In this case, it’s a battle over the constitutional definition of recess that is poised to head to the courts. On one side, President Barack Obama, who yesterday made four controversial recess appointments despite some Republican lawmakers’ efforts to stop him by gaveling in and out of pro forma sessions over the holiday break. (It’s a move Democrats used to thwart President George W. Bush a few years back as well).

On the other side, Senate Republicans and business groups who say that Obama lacked the congressional authority to make the appointments.

The agencies in question – the Consumer Financial Protection Agency and the National Labor Relations Board – have been political flashpoints between the White House and Congress since Obama took office. Senate Republicans, angered over the agencies’ power and actions, made no bones about their willingness to block the nomination of anyone to either agency until changes were made.

All these factors make a potential court battle over the president’s recess appointment a juicy and almost certain proposition. But who will win?

That is unclear – as is the Constitution, which doesn’t define recess or specify how long one has to be for the recess appointment power to take effect. The White House said the president acted on the advice of counsel, essentially calling the pro forma sessions shams.

“The President’s counsel has determined that the Senate has been in recess for weeks and will be in recess for weeks,” said White House Press Secretary Jay Carney yesterday. “The Constitution guarantees the President the right, provides the President the right to make appointments during Senate recesses, and the President will use that authority to make this appointment.”

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell had a different view. “This recess appointment represents a sharp departure from a long-standing precedent that has limited the President to recess appointments only when the Senate is in a recess of 10 days or longer,” McConnell said in a statement. “Breaking from this precedent lands this appointee in uncertain legal territory, threatens the confirmation process and fundamentally endangers the Congress’s role in providing a check on the excesses of the executive branch.”

The next stop in the fight will undoubtedly be a courtroom.

Addendum: This statement just landed in DC Dicta’s inbox, and reminds us why we’ll miss Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass: “Republican’s complaints about the President’s decision to make this recess appointment are equivalent to objections leveled by arsonists at people who use the fire door to escape a burning building.”

Rep. Lamar Smith is amplifying his call to the White House to disclose more information about Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan’s involvement in crafting the defense of the federal health care overhaul when she was solicitor general now that the Court is set to decide the law’s constitutionality.

“Justice Elena Kagan may have played a role in the development and defense of the president’s health-care law during her tenure as U.S. solicitor general,” the Texas Republican wrote in an op-ed in the Washington Post. “Despite claims from Obama administration officials that Kagan was not involved in the health-care discussions, e-mails released last month indicate that there may be more to the story.”

Smith is one of several Republican lawmakers and conservative interest groups who have raised concerns about Kagan’s participation in the case. The Justice Department released emails from Kagan’s tenure as solicitor general which show, according to the Obama administration, that measures were taken to shield Kagan from involvement in the defense of the law, which was challenged in federal courts as Kagan was rumored to be a candidate to replace Justice John Paul Stevens on the Court.

But Smith said some of the emails are inconsistent  with that position, and the White House should provide more information.

“The NFL wouldn’t allow a team to officiate its own game,” Smith worte. “If, as solicitor general, Kagan did advise administration officials on the constitutionality of the president’s health-care law, she should not officiate when the matter comes before the Supreme Court.”

Smith noted that both Kagan and Justice Clarence Thomas – whose wife is affiliated with groups opposing the law – are facing increasing calls by some interest groups to step aside in the case. But according to Smith, the questions raised about Kagan are much more serious.

“[C]oncerns about the job or personal views of a justice’s spouse are not the same as concerns that a justice may have been involved in a matter before it reached the high court,” Smith wrote.